CashWars

Jan 12, 2002:

What an embarrasment, no wonder I'm at -2 reputation on this node. This was my first node ever, I guess I'm lucky it didn't get nuked! Here's my revision of this node in light of the fact that CashWars Inc has gone out of business. I'm not sure when this company ceased operation, but I'd like to explain the CashWars system a little further and how no one would ever make money on the system.

THE SYSTEM:
CashWars was a website that users subscribed to and moved around a grid using no java, simply forms going up, down, left, or right. A fairly large grid mind you, but a simple x by y grid. Sporatically placed throughout this grid are 3 things: Stores, Oil spots, and player's bases (including yours). Each player starts with 5 monetary units and 20 moves per 'day'. The gimmick to CashWars is that these monetary units can be exchanged for real money. Once you reach 20 of these monetary units, you can cash out (the exchange rate was $1 to 3 monetary units). As you're wandering through this grid you can do the following things at particular cells:
a.) You drill for oil when at an oil field.
b.) Use oil to buy special powerups that increase your defense, offense, and oil drilling capabilities when at stores
c.) Spy on a player's base, which tells you how much monetary units they have
d.) Attack a player's base
e.) Nothing if you're in a 'dead' cell

ATTACKING:
So the system is pretty simple, what makes the game unfair is the way in which you attack a player's base, which gives you a chance at a certain percent of their monetary units or the possibility of losing a certain percentage your monetary units. While the offensive power-up's you've bought and the defensive power-up's the other player has purchased play into who wins or loses, its not certain. For instance, I could have a level 9 offense while they had a level 1 defense and I could lose. Having a level 9 offense only modifies the chance of you winning an attack.

PERCENTAGES:
I'm sure there's a statistical or mathematical explanation for this, but since being level 9 or level 1 only modifies the chances of you winning moderately each player ends up having nearly the same amount of monetary units. The concept is this:

CONCEPT:
Imagine a line of numbers, 1 - 10. Do the following:

1.) Pick two different numbers at random
2.) Have the first one take 10% of the second's value.
3.) Repeat

After about 25 iterations, each number will be very close in value. The simplistic reasoning for this is that the (1), for instance, when choosen, has little to lose, but much to gain. So the same applies to players of the game. Its nearly impossible for a user to acheive the status where CashWars Inc. would send them any real money because its much easier to lose money that gain it when you have more than someone else. All the while, players can't wait for tomorrow when CashWars gets another 40 advertising impressions from them.